“She’s at home today,” Gabe said. “Probably sleeping it off. I bet you find Alexa there too. Uncle Nick?”
“What?”
“Don’t tell Alexa I told you. She’ll think I’m like a stalker or something.”
12.
I found the junior senator from Massachusetts picking up his dog’s poop.
Senator Richard Armstrong’s large white standard poodle was trimmed in a full Continental clip: shaven body, white pom-poms on his feet and tail, and a big white Afro perched atop his head. The senator, in a crisp blue shirt and impeccably knotted tie, was groomed just as carefully. His silver hair was perfectly coiffed, with a sharp part on one side. He leaned over, his hand inside a plastic CVS bag, grabbed the dog’s excrement, and deftly turned the bag inside out. He stood upright, face red, and noticed me standing there.
“Senator,” I said.
“Yes?” A wary look. As a well-known, highly recognizable figure, he had to worry about lunatics. Even in this very posh neighborhood.
We stood in a long oval park, enclosed by a wrought-iron picket fence, in the middle of Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill. Louisburg Square is a private enclave of long red-brick row houses built in the nineteenth century, considered one of the most elegant neighborhoods in Boston.
“Nick Heller,” I said.
“Ah, yes,” he said, and gave a big, relieved smile. “Sheesh, I thought you were with the association. Technically, you’re not supposed to walk your dog here, and some of my neighbors get quite upset.”
“I won’t tell,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve always thought that dogs should be trained to pick up our poop.”
“Yes, well … I’d shake your hand, but…”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Is this a good time?” I’d reached out to him through a mutual friend, told him what was going on, and asked if I could come by.
“Walk with me,” he said. I followed him to a historic-looking trash bin, where he dropped his little bundle. “So, I’m sorry to hear about the Marcus girl. Any news? I’m sure it’s just a family quarrel.”
Armstrong had a Boston Brahmin accent, which is nothing like what most people think of as a Boston accent. It’s very upper-crust WASP, mid-Atlantic, and it’s dying out. Hardly anyone speaks that way anymore except maybe a few old walruses at the Somerset Club. He sounded like a cross between William F. Buckley and Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island. Someone once told me that if you listened to recordings of Armstrong when he was a young man, he sounded entirely different. Somewhere along the way he’d acquired the patina. But he really was descended from an old Boston family. “My family didn’t come over on the Mayflower,” he’d once said. “We sent the servants over on the Mayflower.”
We stood before his house—bow front, freshly painted black shutters, glossy black door, big American flag waving—and he began to climb the gray-painted concrete steps. “Well, if there’s anything in the world I can do to help, just ask,” he said. “I do have friends.”
He gave me his famous smile, which had gotten him, a moderate Republican, elected to the Senate four times. A journalist once compared the Armstrong smile to a warm fire. Up close, though, it seemed more like an artificial fireplace, with faux ceramic “logs” painted red to simulate glowing embers.
“Excellent,” I said. “I’d like to talk to your daughter.”
“My daughter? You’d be wasting your time. I doubt Taylor has seen the Marcus girl in months.”
“They saw each other last night.”
The senator shifted his weight from one foot to another. His poodle whined, and Armstrong gave the leash an abrupt yank. “News to me,” he finally said. “Anyway, I’m afraid Taylor’s out shopping. That girl likes to shop.” He gave me the sort of beleaguered smile guys often give other guys say, Women—can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.
“You might want to check again,” I said. “She’s upstairs right now.”
Gabe was monitoring her incessant Facebook postings and texting me updates. I didn’t know how, since he wasn’t a Facebook friend of Taylor’s, but he’d found some way.
Taylor Armstrong, he’d texted me a few minutes ago, had told her 1372 friends that she was watching an old Gilmore Girls rerun and was bored out of her skull.
“I’m sure she and her mother—”
“Senator,” I said. “Please get her for me. This is important. Or should I just call her cell?”
Of course, I didn’t actually have Taylor Armstrong’s cell phone number, but it turned